<< Go Back

More Than Honor (Light in the Empire)

By Carol Ashby

Order Now!

Chapter 1: The Fire

The warehouse district of Rome, AD 126, Day 1

The smoke-gray stallion snorted and tossed his head. Titus Flavius Titianus, tribune of the Urban Cohort, leaned forward and patted the skittish animal’s neck.
“Calm down, boy. The fire’s out. It’s only smoke now.”
The horse froze with front legs spread as it leaned back. Titianus couldn’t blame him. He’d seen the aftermath of too many fires in the city. Like his horse, he’d rather turn and leave. Even with the best efforts of the firefighters of the Vigiles Urbani, too often someone died in the flames. Sometimes they made it out, so badly burned they'd die in agony before the week was out. Given a choice, he’d pick the quicker death.
Titianus stroked the horse’s withers a few times before scratching lightly with his fingernails. With each pass of his fingertips, he spoke gentle words. As the stallion relaxed, tension drained from Titianus as well. After several cycles of strokes and scratches, both were ready to go on. Nudged by Titianus tensing his calves, the horse moved forward.
When word of the fire in the storehouse district spread through the fortress shared by the Praetorian Guard and the Urban Cohort, he’d called for his horse. He was not a man who could sit and wait for bad news.
The warehouse and shipping business built by his father and grandfather sat on the Tiber’s edge where the fire was burning. As he’d trotted down the Vicus Patricius through Subura, skirted the Forums and the Circus Maximus, and passed through the Porta Trigemina to reach the storehouses by the river, worry had gnawed at him.
Probus, warehouse manager since Titianus was a boy, lived in an apartment above the office. Had the man who always had a honey roll for a hungry boy been trapped inside? Had the flames just consumed half his family’s fortune? Had the dowries of his two younger sisters turned to ashes and smoke, ending their chance for a good marriage?
Relief swept over him when the Titianus property came into view. Half a block past it, he reached the smoldering remains of another man’s prosperity.
Charred beams lay at odd angles atop piles of bricks where the walls had collapsed. Wisps of smoke still rose from the rubble, and the soldiers manning the fire engine pumped a stream of water onto whatever was smoldering.
“Tribune.” The centurion who’d directed the battle against the blaze strode toward him. “There’s something you should see.”
Titianus dismounted and tied his horse to a ring on the fire engine. He wove his way past the soot-stained men who poked at rubble piles with their shovels and dowsed any embers they found with water from their pitch-sealed rope buckets.
Before Titianus reached the centurion’s side, Longinus pulled in a deep breath and coughed. “It’s good you came. I was going to have to send for you.”
“What is it?” Did he really want to know? The sun was almost down, and when the vigiles called him to a fire scene, it could be hours before he left.
Longinus tipped his head toward the one small corner of the building that still stood, smoke-blackened but intact. “I’d rather not say until after you see it.”
Titianus rubbed his mouth. Would it be minutes or hours before he could ride back to the fortress? The tightened lips of the centurion whispered “hours” without speaking a word. When Longinus stopped short of the wall, waved him on, and crossed his arms, that whisper became a shout.
On the ground lay the body of a man. Blackened roof timbers had fallen on his lower torso and legs. But it wasn’t smoke or flames or falling debris that had killed him.
Titianus squatted beside the corpse and drew a breath between clenched teeth. A blow to the head had ended this life, but the fire that was supposed to hide that fact had been spotted and extinguished too soon.
The fire was an arson, and the death was a murder. As the tribune commanding the cohort that policed this part of Rome, he’d make certain the killer stood in the arena and paid for both.

%%%%%%

The Porticus of Livia by the Baths of Trajan

The afternoon in the library at the Baths of Trajan had been close to perfect. Pompeia Lenaea and her brother Kaeso had drifted along the wall of cubicles in the historical section, looking for scrolls that might be new. But it was getting late, and walking back to their small town house would be dangerous after dark. It was in a decent neighborhood on the Viminal Hill, but no one without a bodyguard walked the streets of Rome at night, not even in the most elite areas. Especially not a young woman with only her unarmed brother, despite his claim that he could protect them. She knew too well what could happen.
They had almost passed the Porticus of Livia to the east of the bath complex. Through the arched entrance to its inner courtyard, Pompeia could see the network of walkways among the flowers and the Ara Concordia with its altar for offerings to the Roman goddess of agreement in marriage and society. It would be a beautiful place to stroll if not for that pagan shrine.
“Kaeso!
She turned to find Septimus Sabinus striding toward them.
“I didn’t expect to find you here, but your timing is excellent.” Septimus directed his smile at both of them. “There’s a new display in the Porticus of paintings of the mountains of northern Italia. Magnificent country. If I get to serve in a frontier legion in Germania, I’ll get to see it myself.”
Pompeia raised her eyebrow. “I’ve heard about the displays there. Some of the paintings show people doing things I don’t want to see.”
Septimus waved away her objection. “I walked the galleries yesterday, and I can take you to the ones of the Alpes without passing anything like that.”
He fell in beside Kaeso, and they resumed walking. “The gardens are lovely, and you’d find the temple pretty as long as you don’t dwell on what it’s for.”
“There’s a much better way than sacrificing here to have a peaceful marriage. Love and respect between husband and wife―”she lowered her voice to a near-whisper―“that’s what God says will bring harmony to a home.”
“It would, but not many have that.” Septimus’s shrug accompanied a wry smile. “My grandfather always chooses pretty young wives who are too weak to disagree with him openly. But when it’s time for me to marry, I want to choose a woman who values what I do. That should naturally lead to agreement about anything important.” He grinned. “Now I just have to get Father to agree to let me choose.”
“Even the closest friends don’t always agree on the most important things, like whether there’s a god who’s real.” With his knuckles, Kaeso tapped Septimus’s arm. “But I expect I’ll convince you someday.”
Pompeia slid her hand up, then down her upper arm. “There’s only one thing I will insist my husband agree about, and that’s God.”
Septimus drew his breath through his teeth. “That might mean you never marry. The only Christians I knows are in your father’s familia. How will you ever find a Roman man who worships only your god?”
Septimus’s question pricked too close to Pompeia’s heart. How, indeed? “Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. But if it’s God’s will for me to marry, He’ll bring the right man into my life. God can work all things for good for His children, whether I can see the way or not.”
Three men in togas walked toward them, and one pointed at the sky above the bath complex. Pompeia turned to find a wide column of black smoke spiraling upward from the storehouse district by the Tiber.
Kaeso blew his breath out between pursed lips. “I hope that doesn’t belong to one of our students’ fathers.”
Septimus sucked a breath in. “Or my cousin Titianus. He’s equestrian, but not by much. Losing his warehouse would drop him below the minimum fortune to stay in that order.”
Pompeia turned her gaze from the smoke to Septimus. “Titus Titianus?” Septimus nodded. “He was one of Father’s students when I was a girl. He always seemed so serious. He was quieter than most, but Father liked him. He expected Titianus would do well in life.”
“I think he has, even if my father doesn’t. He’s been a tribune of the Urban Cohort for several years. He wanted to serve in a frontier legion, but he stayed in Rome because his father was sick and his sisters were small. He’s been paterfamilias for a few years now. A true man of honor. That’s what Marcus Brutus called him. Brutus said I should try to be like him.”
Pompeia rubbed her arm again. “Brutus of the Ludus Bruti?”
“The same. I still train at his ludus, but he’s not there very often since he remarried in Germania. He and your father taught me the importance of honor. I wanted to become good enough with a gladius to spar with his best trainer, but Africanus is in Germania with him. Brutus said he was his good friend and a man of utmost honor, even though he was a slave. A man’s true worth isn’t decided by his family ties, his social rank, or his wealth. It’s his honor.”
“I met Africanus.” Pompeia traced a line in the dirt with her sandal.
Septimus’s eyebrows rose. “How? Even Kaeso hasn’t.” He grinned at her. “I would never have expected you to be one of the giggling girls who come to the ludus to watch gladiators.”
Pompeia turned her eyes toward the column of smoke. The memory still pained her. “He came with Aulus Secundus and Marcus Drusus to rescue me when I was kidnapped. He’s the reason the man who bought me was afraid to refuse their demand that I be freed. I prayed so hard for deliverance, and God brought them to get me before the worst could happen.”
Septimus’s eyes narrowed. “But how can you be certain your god brought them? Didn’t they come because they thought Aulus’s sister was there?”
“That might be why they thought they came, but God can use people to accomplish something they never intended.” She pursed her lips, then let them curve into a smile. “Maybe He’s even using you now, and you don’t know it yet.”
Kaeso choked back a laugh.
Septimus elbowed him. “I’ll concede that might be possible, if your god does happen to be real. But you haven’t convinced me of that.”
“As Father always says, ‘The man of honor will accept the truth when he finally faces it.’ I don’t have to convince you. Someday God will.” Pompeia offered her warmest smile to her almost-brother. “Can you join us for dinner?”
“Not today. Father is giving a banquet for Grandfather and some senators, and he wants me to join them. The food will be delicious, but the affairs of the Empire and the men who direct them will be the main topics of conversation.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I always want to say something they don’t want to hear, but I know better than to speak about honor in the presence of power.”
“Father also says, ‘When speaking truth to power can draw its wrath, the prudent man chooses silence.’” Kaeso offered his arm that held up his toga, and Pompeia rested her hand there. “We need to go. I don’t want it to get dark before we reach home.” He tapped the dagger that always hung at Septimus’s side. “We don’t have an armed escort if you can’t come with us. Do join us tomorrow, and dine where truth is always welcome.”
“I’ll try.”
Pompeia glanced over her shoulder at Septimus as she and Kaeso headed toward their modest home that also housed the Lenaeus School of Rhetoric. Septimus’s family was richer than most kings, but Septimus was still her second little brother. With a ruthless grandfather who pulled the strings on powerful men and a father who wanted to follow in those footsteps, how could he safely remain a man of honor, one who, despite his skepticism about God, was worthy to be Kaeso’s best friend?

Order Now!

<< Go Back